Sapara: the hidden monastery of the Jaqelis, twelve kilometres from Akhaltsikhe

From Akhaltsikhe a road heads south-east, leaves the valley, climbs through a pine forest and, after 12 km, ends in a clearing where a monastery clings to the hillside, with a domed church, a lower one, a bell tower, defensive walls and, behind, rock. You do not see it until you are on top of it; that is why it is called Sapara, which in Georgian means hidden. The monks chose it for that reason in the 10th century, and the lords of the region made it their burial place three centuries later, when Georgia was falling apart and hiding was a real necessity.

Two churches, three centuries

The small one, the Dormition, is from the 10th century, single-naved, and holds the rarest thing in the complex: a carved stone iconostasis of the same period, with reliefs of the Annunciation, the Nativity and the Presentation, one of the few left in Georgia. The big one, St Saba, was built around 1290 by Beka Jaqeli, atabeg of Samtskhe, when the Jaqelis were almost independent between Mongols and Byzantines: a cross plan with a tall dome, façades with reliefs and, inside, frescoes of the late 13th and early 14th centuries covering everything. On the south wall are portraits of Beka and his sons Sargis and Kvarkvare, in their robes and with their names, looking towards the altar; they are among the best-preserved donor portraits in the country. Beside it, the two-storey bell tower, also 14th-century, and the ruins of the Jaqeli palace.

What happened next

In the 16th century Samtskhe fell to the Ottomans, the Jaqelis became Muslims and pashas of Akhaltsikhe, and Sapara stayed empty and hidden for four hundred years, which, for the frescoes, was a stroke of luck: nobody whitewashed or chipped them. In 1989, with the Soviet Union ending, the monks came back, and today a community keeps the place, sings the hours and receives visitors discreetly. It is a place of silence: you are asked not to talk loudly, not to enter during services and to dress modestly.

How to fit it in

There is no public transport: from Akhaltsikhe a taxi takes 25 minutes, waits and brings you back for a few lari; the last kilometres are track and in dry weather any car manages. Free entry. The usual plan is a day in Akhaltsikhe with the Rabat fortress in the morning, Sapara at midday and the afternoon at Vardzia, 60 km away, or to sleep in Akhaltsikhe and leave Vardzia for the next day. May to October; in winter the track may close with snow.

Frequently asked questions